Tuesday, August 31, 2021

Proposal: Ear of the Panopticon

Timed Out. Passes 7-0—Clucky

Adminned at 03 Sep 2021 02:09:15 UTC

In the rule “Ideologies”, after “The Ministry of Information has an Ideology, which is always Autocracy-Colonialist-Corporatist.” add “The Ideological Proximity of a Cell with the Ministry of Information is defined as the number of terms that are present in both the Cell’s Ideology and the Ministry’s.”

In the rule “Communications”, after “the following atomic action”, add “(known as Processing that Communication)”.

If https://blognomic.com/archive/the_heat_sheet passed, replace “Hot” with “Exposed” in “Adherents” and add a new rule called “Heat” to the Dynastic Rules:

Each Cell is Hot or Cold (defaulting to Cold), and this status is publicly tracked. A Cell can also be Exposed if certain conditions are fulfilled; an Exposed Cell is always Hot. When a Cycle begins, every Cell that is Hot but not Exposed becomes Cold.

If https://blognomic.com/archive/the_heat_sheet passed, add a new rule called “Anonymous Tips”:

A Cell is an Informant or not (defaulting to not); this is privately tracked by the Ministry of Information. A Cell with 1 or more Adherents can become an Informant by spending 1 Adherent and unambiguously and privately informing the Ministry of Information that they are now an Informant. A Cell whose Ideological Proximity with the Ministry of Information is less than 1 is never an Informant.

As a Cyclical Action, an Informant (the Accuser) may create a Tip and send it to the Ministry of Information, and no other recipients. Tips may be sent to the Ministry of Information via the PM functionality at blognomic.com or by DM on Discord.

The body of a Tip must contain the name of another Cell (the Accused) as well as one, two, or three terms (the Accusation(s)) from the List of Ideologies wiki page. A Tip may not contain any terms found in the Ideology of the Ministry of Information.

Each Cycle, before Processing any Communications, for each Tip that they received in the previous Cycle, the Ministry of Information must carry out the following atomic action (known as Processing that Tip):
* Compare the Tip’s Accusation(s) against the Ideology of the Tip’s Accused; ignore all other Tips’ Accusers, Accused, and Accusations during the remainder of this atomic action.
* If no Accusation(s) match terms in the Accused’s Ideology, set the Accuser to Hot and not an Informant, then privately inform them of this.
* If at least 1 Accusation matches a term in the Accused’s Ideology, set the Accused to Hot.
* If at least 2 Accusations match terms in the Accused’s Ideology, remove half of the Adherents (rounding up) of the Accused.
* Privately inform the Accused that they have been the subject of a Tip.

this is long, but the first few paragraphs are just laying the groundwork so that the meat of this proposal is efficient & problem-free. that meat being: clearly, w/ this theme, we need a strong mechanical reason not to publicly announce one’s ideology, so here’s that!!

(i’d love to see an eventual *really* bad thing that could happen if all 3 of your terms are snitched, but we need more mechanics to see that really shine, so it’s beyond the scope of this proposal)

Comments

Brendan: he/him

31-08-2021 23:45:50 UTC

The way Heated/Hot works is kind of confusing to me at first glance. It seems like maybe they should be unrelated adjectives—I think they can still interact without needing to be synonymous. I like the Tip mechanic as a way to probe players, but the way that one gains Adherents to become Heated, to in turn become Hot, which then causes one to lose Adherents, all potentially without one taking any action of one’s own… I guess I don’t fully understand the game loop there.

lemon: she/her

01-09-2021 00:00:01 UTC

edit made (heated->exposed) for clarity!! the idea is that Hot can be caused in one of two ways:
- by an ongoing problem (being one of the largest cells)
- by a temporary effect (a data leak caused by a competing cell)

losing adherents is likely to make u less exposed, but it’s also probably a big setback– adherents seem like they’ll be a resource u use to do stuff– and ur also always going to be made temporarily hot when u lose adherents this way, so it’s not like it’s going to give u a benefit. and the only downside Hot gives u is making communication harder, currently.

lemon: she/her

01-09-2021 00:01:09 UTC

(if u think that becoming hot causes one to lose adherents, ur misunderstanding the rules, i think)

Brendan: he/him

01-09-2021 00:30:53 UTC

Got it, yes, that makes more sense! Thank you.

Kevan: he/him

01-09-2021 08:51:09 UTC

for

Brendan: he/him

01-09-2021 16:05:57 UTC

for

Raven1207: he/they

01-09-2021 19:06:31 UTC

for

Josh: he/they

01-09-2021 19:17:41 UTC

for

Trapdoorspyder: he/him

02-09-2021 03:47:11 UTC

for

Madrid:

02-09-2021 14:25:04 UTC

for